I have been working in the heating and cooling industry for the past 15 years. About five years ago, I was promoted to the manager of the branch where I currently work. I don’t often work regular HVAC service calls. Most of the time I am in the office working on scheduling work billing issues. It’s hard to take a vacation, especially since I keep the shop running like a well-oiled machine. Last year I hired a brand new assistant manager. He has done a fantastic job executing all of the orders that I give and I thought he was absolutely ready to handle things if I left for a week. I scheduled a vacation for my wife and I and we went to the beach for the week. It’s a good thing that we didn’t leave town or the country, because my assistant manager absolutely had a meltdown after I left. My wife and I were out on the beach for an hour or two and we came back to our room. I left my phone in the room while we went to the beach. When I came back, I had 17 missed calls from the assistant manager and 10 missed calls from the workshop. I didn’t even listen to the voicemails before I decided to call the HVAC shop. My assistant manager answered the phone and I could tell that he was upset and frantic. He had two major issues happen at the same time and I could tell that he did not know how to handle either one of the situations. Thank goodness I could be helpful over the phone, because I would have been forced to leave the beach and drive three hours to fix the problem.